Article247_4469.txt

   
   
      
         
            On Fighting Bad Ideas

            Was Culturebox calling for censorship yesterday
when she said she blamed the professional organization where Kevin MacDonald holds several
executive positions, as well as the series editor who oversaw publication of
his books, for his anti-Semitic ideas? How could Culturebox hold the Human
Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) in particular and evolutionary
psychologists in general responsible for the theories of a single man? Isn't
she just being a wooly-headed liberal, scrounging around for ways to condemn a
discipline prone to express politically incorrect ideas?

            One at a time, ladies and gentlemen.

            Several posters in the "Fray" as well as the editor in question, Seymour Itzkoff, believed that Culturebox stopped just
short of calling for a gag order. "I'm not the series approver or disapprover
of the particular ideas of the writers," Itzkoff told her. "I make a decision
about whether the person's work is qualified for publication." Indeed, says
Itzkoff, the nonsense quotient in the books could have been higher. "I was
instrumental in having him rewrite a number of passages, because I said to the
people at Greenwood [Publishing Group] that these would destroy his book--they
were so beyond the pale in terms of factuality. But I couldn't censor or ask
that he rewrite everything."

            Not wanting to be seen as a censor is the defense of nearly everyone who has
helped MacDonald make his upward climb toward respectability. As it happens,
censorship wasn't an issue with the first volume of MacDonald's trilogy,
because Itzkoff thought highly of it (that's the book in which MacDonald calls
Judaism a "group evolutionary strategy" masquerading as a religion in order to
hide its true purpose--to maximize intelligence and give Jews an advantage in
the competition for resources). But even if he'd hated the book, says Itzkoff,
it wasn't his job to pass judgment on its contents--merely on whether it
merited publication. Iztkoff didn't think nearly as well of MacDonald's work in
Volumes 2 and 3 (in which he argues that anti-Semitism is justified and exposes
what he feels to be the Jewish agenda behind 20 th -century
intellectual movements), but by then Itzkoff felt that MacDonald had "the right
to publish it."

            Culturebox isn't buying it. Itzkoff is not the editor of a scholarly
journal. He has not been asked (as such editors are) to toss as many explosive
subjects as possible into the public domain, as long as they meet some minimum
standard. Nor can he offer a letters page for debate. He is not the editor of
Oxford or Cambridge University Press, both of whom publish vast quantities of
books, making the task somewhat similar to that of a journal editor, although
without the forum for debate. Itzkoff is the named editor of a small series of
scholarly books. His name is cited on the title page specifically to guarantee
the quality of the work. Under those circumstances, his judgment as to whether
the work is "qualified for publication" is tantamount to saying that he
endorses its conclusions.

            Moreover, the only institution that owes MacDonald "the right to publish" is
the government, under the First Amendment. Freedom of the press belongs to
those who own one, etc.

            As for blaming HBES in particular and evolutionary psychologists in general:
Culturebox was mistaken to rap the officers' knuckles for letting MacDonald
hold executive positions--he was elected to them, not appointed. That may
reflect poorly on the membership, but it can't be pinned on the officers. And
perhaps she should have given HBES a chance to explain that it has long
embraced an ethos of open expression--until recently, all papers submitted to
the annual HBES conference were accepted without peer review. (According to
founding member Leda Cosmides, back when the group was formed in 1989, this
seemed the best way to combat the censorious hostility directed at most people
working in evolutionary psychology at the time.) But Culturebox doesn't think
being inclusive gets HBES off the hook. On the contrary--accepting papers
without peer review is an abdication of scholarly responsibility under the best
of circumstances and a poor idea for an association of evolutionary
psychologists, whose discipline is notorious for attracting cranks.

            HBES president John Tooby tells Culturebox that he and other HBES members
did not fail to be alarmed by MacDonald's ideas. When a positive review of
MacDonald's work appeared in a journal about to be acquired by HBES, Tooby and
others thought about sitting down and writing a letter objecting to both the
work and the review. In the end, however, they decided not to. They didn't want
to give MacDonald and his reviewer any more attention than they had received
already.

            Culturebox would reply that if you're going to take the unusual step of
welcoming all ideas, you can't proceed to ignore the bad ones. You have to be
prepared to do battle against them. That is (or ought to be) the duty of anyone
who has staked his or her professional reputation on one particular scientific
approach or methodology. And giving publicity to bad ideas isn't itself
necessarily a bad idea. After all, if you draw attention a bad idea by refuting
it, you also put your refutation on record.

            Here's what Culturebox
has to say to all the evolutionary psychologists who feel that Culturebox has
smeared them by association with a man she considers an anti-Semite: If he's
going to lay claim to your methodology and benefit from your systems of
legitimation, it's up to you to distinguish yourself from him. The MacDonalds
of the world won't go away just because you think they're not worth responding
to. Where they'll go is wherever as many people as possible will hear them. And
there they will brag--as MacDonald has done in a response to Culturebox coming
soon to the Fray, and as he probably will in a British court some time in the
next few months--"I have published my views in highly reputable refereed
journals in psychology."

            Note for all of you who have stuck with this endless New York Review
of Books -style refutation and have yet to flee screaming: Culturebox will
be responding to MacDonald's post
in the Fray--in the Fray. She hereby promises to keep Culturebox itself
MacDonald-free--at least for the time being.